In Bobbe Seymore's latest newsletter, he made the following statement about Red Rhodes:
Red is also known for his work in guitar electronics. I know when I saw him play at Disneyland he was playing through a Fender Deluxe Reverb that he had hot-rodded to put out nearly a hundred watts.
Rumor has it that he started building a custom amplifier that it seems like everybody in L.A. was getting in line to buy. It was called Mesa Boogie. His knack for modifying Fenders also earned him much notoriety.
My understanding is that Mesa/Boogie (Mesa Engineering) was started by Randall Smith up here in Petaluma. See Wikipedia quotes below:
Mesa/Boogie (also known as Mesa Engineering) is a company in Petaluma, California that makes amplifiers for guitars and basses. It has been in operation since 1969.
Mesa was started by Randall Smith as a small repair shop which modified Fender combos to give them more gain. Prominent early buyers included Carlos Santana, and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, helping to develop Mesa/Boogie's reputation as an amp builder.
Was Red actually a part of Mesa? Or, did he just call his modded amp a Mesa Boogie and Smith also used the same name? There's no mention of it anywhere I could find.
If I remember right, Bob (Lee) worked for Mesa at one time. Maybe he can shed some light.
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 .Playing for 53 years and still counting.
Richard,I haven't seen Bobbe's newsletter...I knew Red and he never mentioned Mesa Boogie to me...I'm sitting here looking at two Deluxe Reverbs he built for me...they are indeed just shy of a hundred watts each...they have 6550 power tubes and huge power and output transformers in them...they REALLY need fans in them because they were wanting to get hot and blow up all the time back in the'80s when I got'em...I finally came to and decided to use Twins and Peaveys(didn't have to carry'em)...when they worked,though...nothing like'em.
Yeah, I saw that email & knew it was a mistake. Red did do a lot of amp mods & also made the FANTASTIC Velvet Hammer pickups (Clarence White loved 'em). He even made a steel pickup where every other string went out in stereo - so if you arpeggiated across the strings it bounced back & forth between the two amps! But Randy Smith came up with the Mesa Boogie's up in the Bay Area in the early 70's. A small mistake from someone who will always know more about steels than I ever will.
I also thought it was strange that someone like Bobbe could make that mistake. That's why I wonder if Red ever called his amp mods by Mesa Boogie or something similar. Bobbe has one of the best brains in our business.
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 .Playing for 53 years and still counting.
I'm sitting here looking at two Deluxe Reverbs he built for me...they are indeed just shy of a hundred watts each...they have 6550 power tubes and huge power and output transformers in them
I can't even imagine an amp like that. My guitar player uses a stock silverface Deluxe and at what(?), 22 watts, he can smoke my NV400.
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 .Playing for 53 years and still counting.
I remember being in Red's shop one time when he was playing his Fender thru 2 of those hot-rodded Deluxes. And, his steel had that kooky pickup that had every other string coming out of a different amp.
Quite a sound.
Red was really something...the first time I went to his house I knocked on the door,he invited me in and said"you wanna see my Oscar?"He led me to the mantle and there it was...his Oscar!Evidently he worked on the soundtrack from"The Right Stuff"or"Apollo 13"or some other movie and had the Oscar to show for it!I only got to hang with him a couple of times but I really enjoyed it.
Rick Wayne,Randy Travis'guitar player(he had a Red amp too)knew Red way before me and saw him a lot at the Palomino,his shop,etc.back in the day...
Just kidding!Yeah,I'm still there...about to start year 18...I reckon I'll be there till he gets tired of me!I've been playing with RT off and on for almost 27 years,and it's still fun,so...
I knew Red real well and used to hang out at his shop in Hollywood a lot in the mid 70s. First of all he worked at Fender in the 60s and was the guy who fixed your Fender amp when you sent it back to Fender for repair,and could literally walk down the aisle at Electronic City in Burbank and buy the components it took to build any Fender amp from memory. He was also the guy who first souped up a Fender tube amp from a Champ to a Princeton to a Deluxe to a Twin and so on and his position was that once his customized amps were out there on the road and techs up and down the West Coast had decyphered his souped up amp circuits in the mid to late 60s,others including the guys at Boogie simply took his ideas and ran with them. He wasn't particulary bitter about it because it wasn't rocket science and lotsa guys might have eventually come up with such ideas. But he liked to let people know that he was the first one who came up with something like the modern high performance boutique tube amp.He was also the first guy I'm aware of to wind custom pickups for steel and guitar and I still have a couple of his hexaphonic pannable stereo pickups on a certain blue guitar hanging on the wall in my studio. Red was a brilliant reniassance man in many ways - earthy,funky and funny - an inventer at heart,a true american original and anybody who knew him will tell you the same thing.Just ask Skip,Jay Dee,Jeff Baxter,Buddy Emmons,Al Perkins,Pete Kleinow,Mike Nesmith and all the L.A. pickers who hung out with him at that great little shop on Caheunga Blvd in Hollywood - Red's Royal Amp Repair with its little apartment in the back where many interesting parties took place. His biz card read: "Red's Royal Amp - where you get it royally". I learned a helluva lot from Red about the 60s-70s L.A. music scene when I first came to town - some of which I shant repeat in this family forum. He played an original tuning - an Eb6 10 string with 5+4 and played all the steel you could stand w/a great pop country style. He was a fountainhead of information and ideas.The world is a poorer place without him. I count myself lucky to have known him and will always miss him terribly.
Red was great for sure. My first taste of him was Freddy Weller's "Games People Play" album (I think that's the title). Remarkable tone and style. I never got to meet him, but was fortunate enough to see him a couple of times with Nesmith.
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 .Playing for 53 years and still counting.
I remember going into Red's shop on Caheunga Blvd in the late 70's right after I auditioned for the Gong Show at some production office down the block. (and that's a whole other story folks!;-)) Red was holding court, playing the first Sierra steel and Roland Jazz Chorus amp I ever saw. I had been playing steel for a few years already, but Red must've known I was still pretty green. He told me it was the steel, not the amp, that was responsible for that cool whirling Leslie sound. I believed him! Red was quite a joker evidently...kinda like Bobbe.
In the early '70's I lived in Hollywood a few blocks from Red's shop. He was a great character and was more than likely to fix your amp in exchange for a six pack of Budweiser. The caps he put in my Ampeg B15 are still there.
Red was my mentor; he found jobs for me, recommended me to bandleaders, fixed my equipment, let me hang for hours on end in his shop on Cahuenga (spelling, you guys!!! You both are from Califorina, aren't you? ) and generally got me started in the professional music bidness.
Everything that Michael J. said is the total truth, like he took the words and thoughts right from my brain. Red was one of a kind, and I loved him. Last time I saw Red was in the early 90's when he came to Austin with Nesmith. We had a long lunch and spent the afternoon hours in a philosophical discussion on whether Jesus Christ would want us to own handguns.
My rig: Infinity and Telonics.
Son, we live in a world with walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with steel guitars. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg?
Yeah, Red was one of a kind. When I first moved to LA in '72, the first place I hit was Red's shop. I lived on Cahuenga just above the 101, so it was an easy walk for me. He worked on my stuff for years, and the hang in the shop was not to be missed.
Well said, Mike. I know we both got it "Royally" a few times...
Red Rhodes was involved with GT amplifiers which is documented in the excellent book by Aspen Pittman:
The Tube Amp Book. I don't know about any connection with Mesa Boogie, but they're wonderful amps, too.
The first week I was in L.A. I had a gig opening for Shuggie Otis and my 69 Twin was making funny noises. So a guy I had just met who knew Red took me down to his shop around 6:00 PM which had just closed. I saw Red behind the counter and yelled thru the mail slot in the door that I needed my amp fixed for a gig that night. I came over and we had a conversation thru the mail slot where he told me to go next door to the liquor store and come back with a 6 pack of Michelob which I did. He opened the door,I wheeled in my amp and he proceeded to blackface my 69 Twin in about 20 minutes while we put away the 6-pack. He sent me on my way to my gig with a honkin amp,new tubes and the advice that since I was new in town,with a twinkle in his eye he told me I should seek out the company of Linda Ronstadt because: "She reallylikes steel players".
Ransom Beers wrote:I heard that Red Rohdes was the steel player on a lot of Haggard recordings & not Norm Hamlet,true?
False, is my firm belief.
Red did do a totally unrelated cameo with Haggard on the tail end of "Hillbillies In a Haunted House," a completely forgettable movie from the mid-60's.
The film also had Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, and Lon Chaney Jr. in bit roles, which tells me that even classic actors will do anything in the twilight of their careers to make money. I would have expected it of Ferlin Husky, Don Bowman, and even bombshell Joi Lansing, but not Carradine, Rathbone, and Chaney.
Oh well, ...
My rig: Infinity and Telonics.
Son, we live in a world with walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with steel guitars. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg?
) and generally got me started in the professional music bidness.